Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Andre,” I called as I crossed the pit. He had a hand under Max’s jaw now, keeping his mouth clamped. “Can we lock him down somewhere? Preferably out of sight so I can calm his rage.”
“That would be for the best. We’ll take him to the slaughter rooms.” He shoved the words through his teeth as he forced Max from the ring.
I reached for the Glamour die in Max’s pocket, wondering if I could force him to relax.
Break into his mind somehow. That was a breach of trust I couldn’t commit until it was necessary, but the Cursed holding his neck shut was reason enough—until Elli distracted me.
“What were you discussing with Damien?”
“I got him to tell us where my mother is being held,” I said.
Elli’s eyes lit up her face. “Really? Where?”
“Dupont has them in an abandoned ship in the dry docks, appearing like it’s being serviced. I need to get Max out of this bloodrage so we can get to her.” I glanced back at Damien, who appeared to be resting now that the worst of the healer’s treatment was over.
She swallowed hard, nodding. “I’ll wait for you here.”
“Nina!” Andre called from the throat of the tunnel. Elli tapped my shoulder and returned to the healer treating Damien.
My attention returned to Max. I followed closely as they dragged him down a wide corridor once meant for the creatures that had been auctioned here.
They threw him in a barred room with a water pump, once used for keeping the animals clean and watered.
With speed only belonging to a bloodline and a Cursed, they rushed from the room, holding the door just wide enough for me to enter.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Andre asked. “Just because you calmed him once doesn’t mean it’ll work again. Every bloodrage is different. He’s particularly locked in tonight.”
I spoke to him through the bars, pushing the door shut. “I’ll be fine. Max would never hurt me.”
“That’s what Otto would have said once, before he got his neck torn open.” Andre ran a hand through his silvery strands. “I’ll stay here for a moment. Just in case.”
I nodded with a small, reassuring smile. “Good idea.”
Max seethed behind me, and I turned to find his orange eyes blazing in the shadowed chamber. The only other light came from a window near the ceiling, at the same level as the streets above. Moonbeams cast Max’s frame in silver, highlighting the natural color beneath the blood matting his hair.
He was a gory sight. Blood coated his lips, his chin, the front of his neck, and the collar of his shirt. His eyes were bruised, and the blood smearing his arms made it difficult to assess any other injuries he could be suffering from.
“Max…”
“What did Damien say?” he rasped. His voice was restrained, as if pulled back by a leash.
“Everything. He told me my mother is being kept in an abandoned ship in the dry docks. So I let the healer see him.”
“But you let him live? After all he’s done to us?” He shivered as the rage slipped from his bones. The breath in his chest wasn’t quite so forced.
“He was a puppet, Max. Not our main enemy.” I took a step closer, my heart galloping despite the warning from my logic to stay back. To talk him down instead of reaching for him. But I ignored my head for the first time, thinking with my gut. Acting on what felt right instead of rational.
A low growl slipped from Max once more as I stepped just within reach. “He threatened you, Nina.”
“To make you desperate. He still cares for his family, I think. Deep down. He knows everything about Dupont, Max. Without him, I don’t think we’d ever have known how close my mother has been this whole time.”
The searing color of his eyes turned molten, and the lids fluttered slightly as I skimmed the back of my hand across his arm. His skin was hot to the touch, pleasantly warm. “I almost killed him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I could have ruined everything because of this rage. I couldn’t see beyond the red. I would have killed him before he even confessed. Hell, Nina. Don’t you understand how dangerous I am? I’m a fucking bomb waiting to go off!”
“Have you ever felt this way before?” I asked.
“No!” He grasped his hands over his head, trying to take deep breaths, to relax, while I watched him.
“Damnit all, I’ve never felt this kind of hatred, not even when I hunted the engineer.
I call it a rage, but it’s something deeper.
There’s some kind of instinct in my soul…
to kill. To hurt.” He scrubbed his face.
“It overrides all logic, and I can’t stop myself. ”
I pushed him deeper, making him confess. Admit it, not to me, but to himself. “Think, Max. Why are you like this now? What’s happening to you?”
His shoulders slumped, and he fell to his knees with his head bowed. “You, Nina. Fuck, it’s been you this whole time.”
I stepped closer to him, taking his head in my hands. I could barely make out his face in the dark, but I could feel the tension in his jaw, the skim of his calloused fingers as he returned the connection. “Is this why you push me away? You don’t like the man you become around me?”
A mirthless laugh escaped his lips. “The opposite, actually. I feel different when you look at me. Less like an abomination. More like a man.”
“Then I don’t understand—”
A gas lamp flickered alive on a wall, kissing his profile with golden light. His Forge die flipped between two fingers before sliding back into his pocket. “Look at me. Look at what I am. Doesn’t that explain enough?”
“It doesn’t. And let me tell you why.” I sat on my knees in front of him.
“My mother lost her mind in my youth. Ever since, I’ve taken care of the both of us.
I’ve worked since I was a child, unable to go to any kind of school because I had to work.
Thankfully, I had Bernard, or I’d have probably ended up doing worse things for money than pushing bodies. ”
I stroked a piece of his hair to the side, staring at his bloody face as I explained further.
“When I heard rumors of a place for people like me and my mother—Sanctuary—I did anything I could to save enough to get us there. So I could finally get the help I needed. I thought I could have protection there from a world that was crushing the life out of us. But none of that matters anymore. Max, I didn’t make it to Sanctuary, but I found one anyway. I found you.”
He blinked several times, holding back any emotion on the brink of exposure. “Nina, I am soaked in blood. How am I your sanctuary?”
“Because you don’t mind wearing the blood of our enemies.
For the first time in my life, I feel safe.
I’m determined to find my mother, but I don’t worry.
I’m not anxious about what tomorrow brings.
I can breathe without feeling that constricting ache around my ribs.
I have you on my side, and I know as long as we’re together, nothing can stop us.
” I lifted slightly to place the barest of kisses over his cheek, avoiding Damien’s dried blood.
“This is our sanctuary, Max. And if you ask me, I think your bloodrage is getting worse because you’re fighting your instincts. ”
“And what are my instincts telling me, Nina?” he whispered, voice like coarse wool, low and rough. “What could I do to satisfy this lust?”
I was so very glad he asked. “Claim me.”
His breath caught in his throat, lips parting slightly to reveal the tips of his elongated canines. “Claim you?”
I nodded. “Don’t look so taken aback. You were the one who worded it in such a way.”
He briefly smiled before falling serious again. “Nina, I’ve thought about claiming you many times. I’ve thought of taking you in a bed, on a steamboat, in a parked car. But never in a slaughter room while I was covered in blood.”
“Strange. I never imagined it any other way.” I smiled and went to the water pump on the other side of the room.
There were drains in the floor that led to the sewers and a washing station for…
whatever a butcher would have used it for.
I didn’t care. I turned on the water system that drenched the room in a soft spray.
“Fuck, Nina.” He winced as the water hit him.
“Too cold for you?”
He shook his head. “Not nearly cold enough.”
I giggled as I watched the freezing water hit his heated skin, steam forming where they collided. Max sucked a long breath as he scrubbed the filth from his body. Blood turned the water red where it drained in the middle of the floor.
His clothes were quickly drenched and clinging to his form.
I studied the outline of him, the lean length of his arms and chest, the way his body tapered to his waist and narrow hips.
The lacerations across his middle had begun to heal already, thanks to his Cursed abilities.
The water pulled his pants low around his hips, revealing the V-shaped indention leading below his belt…
I was so distracted by my assessment, I didn’t notice he’d started toward me. I held out a hand, bracing him back. “What are you doing?”
“Claiming you,” he said, matter-of-factly. “But I’m not the only filthy one here.”
He snatched me by the waist with a single arm and lifted me like it was nothing. “Max, do not—”
Max buried his wet face into my neck. “You stink. Where the hell have you been?”
I couldn’t answer him without shivering. “I used the card Damien bled on that night in the den and tracked him to a house. I assumed it belonged to him, but I think it must be the Governor’s mansion. Dupont was there.”
“And then he hurt you,” Max snarled, eyes glancing toward the bars still shutting us inside.
I pulled his face back to mine. “And then I escaped and came back to you. Though, that path might have led me through the sewers under Valveron.”
The shock of cold water began to lessen. Heat returned to my skin with the slide of his stare over my wet dress. His fingers pushed away the hair clinging to my face so he could press his forehead to mine. “Sounds like you need this more than I do, then.”
“You have no idea.”